A single, rural mama's ramblings about parenting boys, finding herself (oh brother), struggle and joy, juggling more jobs than you can shake a stick at, creativity as we attempt to not only survive but somehow live a fulfilling and rich life below the poverty line, humor as a coping mechanism when you'd be a basket case otherwise, and all the beauty that IS.

Friday, March 20, 2009

That's what The Kid screamed many, many times today while racing through the house holding a carved, wooden mushroom over his head. Yeah, I don't really get it either, but it seemed sort of funny. I have a new computer since they went on wicked sale last week...and I haven't quite got it all figured out yet, but at least I've got a spot to store all the photos from my completely full digital cameras! The sap has not been running that great yet, hoping it will today...the sugar bush along the Foundry Road is always late, but the ones in our yard are really giving well, it's so nice and sunny down here. Later all!

Monday, March 16, 2009

Made the first syrup of the season last night... Yay! It took several days for the pans to sweeten, but it should be hourly from here on out! That's the good news, well, that and the fact that everybody is healthy and happy for the most part... Bad news is: We woke up on Saturday morning to the smoke detectors going off. We are NEVER turning that old oil furnace on again...No more cement is going to do a thing for it. It's been hobbed back together a dozen times. Justin decided he would cut down a half-uprooted tree that has been leaning towards our barn for a while, and fire up the wood furnace. As luck would have it, his chainsaw died and he spent half the day tinkering with it before we got cold enough to go get some wood from Mom & Dad's house. We actually ordered three cords of firewood months ago, but the guy had no wood to deliver, and kept telling us he'd get some soon, but winter's practically over! Anyway, it's warm today. I just gave the baby his first chocolate chip cookie after lunch. He seemed to enjoy it and then the next thing I knew, he had gone and chewed on my white dining room curtains with a mouthful of chocolate...not a pretty sight. Uuuggg. He also had a diaper explosion earlier while seated on a dainty, lacy, floral throw cushion. Right now he's seeing if he can cover every inch of the kitchen with dog kibble...the only thing worth playing with, in his opinion. It was a rather calm morning though, as The Kid slept in until 9:30, an unheard of time for rising in our house! All the sugaring/snowshoeing/late nights are getting to him. I am forseeing school mornings to be trouble with a capital T! He had a fabulous time raking mud in my parent's driveway yesterday. He was caked with it from toe to chest, but quite thrilled with himself. On Saturday, we took the kids to see Goodnight Moon/The Runaway Bunny by the Mermaid Theatre, a traveling group from Nova Scotia. I highly recommend it for little people, absolutely wonderful, and they loved it. My hard-drive is still dead, not dead and buried, but certainly dead for the time being until we can afford to have the data recovered. My pictures on here may be very limited for awhile because there is no room on my computer to hold them. I can upload straight from my camera onto flickr and then pull them from flickr to here, but that seems like an awful lot of work at the moment. Just putting a couple of pictures on and typing a little is a lot of work today...The Kid leaned over to see these pictures, and fell out of his chair, yanking out a good sized fistful of my hair on his way down. And now they've both left me nursing my bald spot to go play in their rice table. E calls to me every few seconds to tell me his brother is eating it/dumping it out/spitting in it/mixing in dog food/or wrecking whatever he is trying to do, but they are very cute playing together. Spring sunshine is pouring in, the river is rushing along, all choppy and brown, bare patches of ground are growing barer and mud-squishy...things are improving, maybe not in looks, but I'm thawing too. A little less tense, frozen and grouchy every day closer to bare feet, green grass and wide open windows.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Well, I feel pretty much as low as I've ever felt. This evening, the dang dog jumped up and pulled my external hard-drive off the table, smashing it. All lost. Every picture I've taken for the last five years was on there. Only a tiny percentage was saved on cd as Justin has always scoffed at my "anal need to double-triple save everything". We had to drag all my files on to it because our computer was overloaded and about to crash...I had just started to double-save things on disks, when we ran out of them and hadn't gotten more yet. I think I average somewhere around 100 shots a day...I do put a half-dozen or so on Flickr daily (thank goodness), but a million other pictures of my kids and my portfolio of professional stuff was recently sorted and moved to the drive due to lack of space on the computer. I threw a box of crackers across the dining room and spent an hour in the bathtub sobbing. I'm sick and tired of EVERYTHING. Calling around, we discovered that there are places that can get the info back, but it is thousands of $. Not possible for us. I am miserable. I make memories through pictures, I can't remember shit unless I have a photo to trigger the memory. My pictures are more important to me than any other thing I own, they aren't a possession, they are part of me, and I feel horrified and defeated to know they are pretty much lost to me now. I mean, taking photos is the only thing that I DO, my only outlet, the one thing that makes me feel like I am anything other than a boring, pointless, little housewife. Each of those shots is precious to me. They ARE me. If it wasn't for my cameras, I sometimes think I would lose my mind. I feel like that terrible nightmare that I always have of my house burning and my pictures being lost has come true. Brokenhearted tonight.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Most beautiful day!!!! Warm, sunny, melting snow, mud, birds singing, the ping, ping, ping of sap dripping into the buckets...Ahhhhhhhhh! Spring!!!!! Of course I took a zillion photos, and of course I'm too lazy to upload them in here. Head over to Flickr to see more.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Our furnace died. Again. Whatever. Anyway, I was explaining something about the situation to Myra, who asked why it died...I said "Because it is an ancient piece of shit" or something of that nature. She admonished me that the kids were going to start to repeat these things. Eli gave us a devilish look, and started chanting "Ancient, ancient, ANCIENT!" in a sing-song voice.

Monday, March 2, 2009

(A post that is depressing through and through. Spare yourself and don't read it.)

Town Meeting tomorrow should be interesting this year...lots of small town drama to liven up this crummy week. Always a good time. Should cheer me up enormously. It's one of those days where I feel I can do no right. Kids being needy, tormenting each other, and sobbing about every little thing until I feel like sobbing too.

Normally I feel mostly content with the choices I've made and the direction of my life, but I must say that today I do not. Today the happy veneer, humor, and joy is stripped off and all I see is a housewife staring out at a dreary, cold landscape and wondering if I will ever feel young again. Today it is not funny to me that there is peanut butter on my camera lens. Today it is not cool that the dog ate my toothbrush. I feel trapped. Scared. Sad. I want to lace up some sneakers and take a run. Can't. I want to go dancing. Can't. I want to curl up with a good book, or some fresh paper and a pen. Can't. Want to take pictures somewhere other than the inside of my own house. Can't. That seems to be the word of the winter.

Justin's Grandma is in the hospital with Pneumonia and refuses to eat...so that's not looking good. We are hoping to get up there after the meeting tomorrow.

This morning, the puppy would not come when I called him in from outside and I hunted everywhere, with the kids opening the door and screaming to me every five seconds. Finally I heard his collar jingle upstairs in our barn, how he got in there, I'll never know, there were no footprints leading to the (shut) door or anything. All I can think of was that he jumped through an open window? Anyway, when I stepped into the barn, I didn't notice through all the jumble of junk that the floor had flooded and was now a sheet of ice, and I went down hard among the welder, saw blades, extra gasifier parts and oil pans. Somehow managed to not get cut or truly hurt, just banged up. The dog would not come down the stairs because he was stuck on one side of the room...(Justin has pulled some of the floorboards up, getting to the stairs is tricky) Worried that he might be hurt, I had to go up after him and carry him wriggling frantically back through the maze of pointy metal things and ice. Very thankful I didn't knock myself out, with the kids all alone in the house.

We had a nice weekend, got nothing done, but got to spend time with friends on Saturday. I don't know. I'm always reading depressing blog, facebook, etc entries by other people and thinking "Cut the daily sob-story, geez, what is your PROBLEM?! Get off your ass and stop being mopey/tired/bitter/sad!" But here I am, doing it too. Seriously, though, I honestly think winter has a lot to do with it. This winter in particular. Those of you that actually read this bunk of mine will have certainly noticed that I don't seem to be such a mess during the warm months. Like it's some sort of seasonal, bipolar disorder? Winter in our house brings with it; germs, insane heating bills, car trouble, missed work (no money), short, cold days, long, cold nights (usually with somebody coughing/feverish/stuffed up...and that means no sleep for me) and on and on... I think I've written pretty much this exact same entry before. Sigh. I am one of those irritating people with a broken record of woes. I'm just tired and upset all the time lately. I have never been a yeller, I'm proud that my kids are so sweet, and I am so patient. I used to feel super smug... chalk one up for good parenting. But lately, in the last few weeks, I find myself snarling at them and it breaks my heart to see their faces when I snap at them for something silly. I hate myself for it. They are incredibly sensitive little guys and I am being a high-strung beast. The constant squabbling and craziness makes me lose it. It's like everything comes to a head once a day in some sort of stressful climax...dog on the table eating somebody's lunch, phone ringing, I trip over a toy trying to get to the baby being shoved, screaming, out of a chair by his brother who has just dumped a glass of milk over, and what isn't being licked up by the dog is running swiftly towards a pile of bills and my camera. I can't help myself but howl. I've had to shut myself in the bathroom before and just try to calm down and not shout all over the place at them. The computer has become a form of escape, though the only time I'm on it is while the baby is sleeping in my arms...he won't nap by himself anymore because his brother is too noisy, and wakes him up. He doesn't seem to be disturbed as long as I'm holding him...hence more back problems. I'm frustrated because I feel like a single parent. Justin is working over an hour away so he gets home late, we just have time for dinner, put The Kid to bed, attempt a quick clean up of disaster that is our house, rock The Baby to sleep and fall into bed. Usually, the only time I have to myself is a hot shower which is, pathetically, pretty much the one thing I look forward to all day long. The only actual attention Justin and I pay to each other is to argue about which one of us is more overworked. It's a selfish, stupid fight that has no resolution, and still we do it. The road looks like a mirror right now and snow is driving down and fogging it up. I despise this winter. I'm ashamed of my whining, but I NEED to whine today. Sorry.